Rebirth 08: Rise from copycat phones

Chapter 190: The First Domestic Dual-Core Chip
Relying on the operating system of big brother Zhiyun, even if the hardware configuration of Weiku Electronics is lower, it is still smoother than those native Android phones with higher configurations, or Android customized systems with minor changes in the interface and fonts.

This is the special advantage brought by the operating system, and it is also an advantage that many mobile phone manufacturers envy and hate... They can also pile up hardware, and they can even get the same hardware as Xiaolan 3... Anyway, Zhiyun Semiconductor has opened it for sale to the outside world.

They have all the hardware you need, and the internal design and exterior design of the phone... It's not that difficult. You can either copy Apple or Zhiyun.

But the problem is that they can’t copy the system.

You said you also wanted to make some super-magic changes, learn from Zhiyun to create a semi-closed ecosystem, and strictly control software apps. That requires the ability to do so.

Even a four-star app like this can only stare blankly at the native open source version of Android developed by Zhiyun and Gugou... Until now, it can only change the interface, modify the font, and do some insignificant things.

And we dare not change even a single punctuation mark in the underlying core!
I don’t know how many holes the engineers from Zhiyun and Gugou have buried in the underlying core code, and it is extremely difficult to modify it.

To be honest, from a technical point of view, it would be easier for Four Star to develop a new mobile phone operating system than to modify the open source Android system from the underlying code level... At least Four Star's self-developed system does not have so many troubles.

But the problem is that there is no market for self-developed systems.

If you develop a self-developed system, how many of the hundreds of thousands of software developers from all over the world will pay attention to you?

If the software manufacturer ignores you, the system it produces will not have sufficient software content.

Without software content, the system is just a blank sheet of paper and is useless!
Four-star's self-developed system is still half-dead.

In addition, there are actually quite a few self-developed systems in China, but they are basically useless and can’t make any waves at all.

As for operating systems in modern times, the difficulty has never been a technical issue...the real difficulty lies in the ecological issue.

Google took the lead, HTZ prepared the prototype, Zhiyun followed up and promoted it, and then a large number of Android mobile phone manufacturers around the world worked together to promote it. Then, after seeing this, many software manufacturers also cooperated in promoting it for the sake of the mobile Internet market. Finally, an Android ecosystem and a fruit ecosystem were created to compete with each other.

You, a mobile phone manufacturer, want to create a new ecosystem on your own...it's impossible!
Even a strong company like Zhiyun can only create a semi-closed ecosystem in secret. Taking the opportunity of launching tablet computers, it tried to create an exclusive Zhiyun tablet computer ecosystem.

And the reason why it was successful... is because the Zhiyun tablet ecosystem still belongs to the Android ecosystem.

Zhiyun simply asks software manufacturers to cooperate and make certain adaptations based on the original Android software... and it has also developed a large number of developer kits on its own and provided them to software manufacturers for free, allowing them to carry out conversion and adaptation at the lowest cost.

Even so, it encountered many problems. Many software manufacturers ignored it, or it was not smooth, and the products it produced were not suitable, forcing Zhiyun to develop a lot of software on its own, such as word processing, image processing, adaptation processing and other software...

Zhiyun Technology, a company that focuses on hardware, was forced to develop these conventional software.

Because of Zhiyun Technology's efforts to develop this tablet computer ecosystem, its tablet computer project was delayed twice, and it was delayed for more than a year before it was launched on the market.

If we ignore the tablet ecosystem and directly use regular Android software under the YUN OS system, it could even be launched on the market last spring... But this is not what Xu Shenxue wanted.

Xu Shenxue has great ambitions in ecology!

He has always wanted to build his own closed ecosystem... How to build this closed ecosystem? Naturally, he guides software manufacturers step by step to launch ecological content that can only be used in their own systems.

For example, the current Zhiyun tablet ecosystem content seems to be Android software, but in fact it is specially adapted for the Zhiyun tablet. It is quite troublesome to use it on tablets or mobile phones with other Android systems...even the interaction methods are slightly different.

Not to mention there are some permissions issues!
Zhiyun is very overbearing. If you want to use the Zhiyun channel, you have to honestly cut off all kinds of permissions... But other Android channels don't need to do this.

Many domestic software manufacturers often develop two Android versions... One is exclusively for the Zhiyun Mall channel, which is the channel for the three brands of Zhiyun mobile phone, Xiaolan mobile phone, and Weiku mobile phone. This version is often very honest and basically the same as the IOS version.

The other one is used to access other Android channels, or simply download the version from the official website...and this version is very unrestrained, it requires all the permissions that can and cannot be requested, and then various startup, background resident, associated startup downloads, etc.

After a novice user downloads one of their apps, if he is not careful, he will download their entire family of apps. Not only that, he will also be induced to download all kinds of messy apps... Software manufacturers also sell advertisements.

This is actually not bad!
For some of them, after you download one of their apps, when you wake up the next day, wow... there are more than a dozen apps on your phone.

Just like magic apps, they appear on their own!

In addition, native Android does not have the function of forcibly closing and cleaning background software... Google believes that multitasking requirements are very important, and it is impossible to kill the multitasking attribute of the system for the sake of smoothness alone.

Then the phone will become slower, especially after using it for a long time, the lag will be very obvious.

If you encounter some users who don’t even know how to clean up the APP, the user experience will be very bad.

However... mobile phone users of Zhiyun Technology and Wecoo Electronics will not have this feeling, because the Yun OS system they use has very strict permission management and a very unique mandatory automatic cleaning setting for background programs.

In the Yun OS system, if an APP does not have background running permission, it will be forced to close within a few minutes when the user switches it to the background.

Of course, users can also choose to turn on the background running permissions of this APP to avoid being accidentally killed by the system... For example, they can switch to the background to hang up while playing with their phone.

Then there is file management and some underlying operating logic of the system. After version 3.0, Yun OS has become very different from native Android, and even many underlying core codes are different.

The only thing that is consistent with the Android system is that both parties are still using the same Android ecosystem. However, even in this ecosystem, the various Android software under the Zhiyun ecosystem are very different from the general version of Android software.

When it comes to the tablet ecosystem, this difference is further widened... Zhiyun Technology is guiding software manufacturers little by little towards its own exclusive ecosystem.

Nowadays, various software manufacturers on the market have become accustomed to making their software into three versions: IOS version, Yun OS version, and Android universal version.

In addition to the IOS version, the other two Android versions are often not universal... First of all, those manufacturers will not take out the "honest version" supplied to Zhiyun Mall separately and then provide it to ordinary users for download...

They just want more permissions and collect more data, so they create a "universal version". Otherwise, they can just release the YUN OS version to other Android phones and there is no need to create a universal version.

Therefore, other mobile phone users cannot actually obtain this "honest version" specially prepared for Zhiyun Mall...

For users of Zhiyun phones and Weiku electronic phones, when they click on the software download link on the web page on their phones, they will not directly download the installation package, but will directly jump to the software download interface of the Daozhiyun APP.

But when you click this download link on other brands of mobile phones, you will be provided with a universal version installation package or some universal version download channel links.

Of course, there are some more honest software manufacturers who will directly provide the Zhiyun APP version of the software to other channels or their own official websites...but there are not many such conscientious software manufacturers.

The general version of Android software generally cannot be downloaded to the Yun OS system.

At the system level, Yun OS will reject installation packages that are downloaded without formal permission.

If you really want to install it, you need to enter the developer interface...

Ordinary users don’t even know that this thing exists, and even if they do, they generally won’t turn on this developer function... Zhiyun will give users who try to turn on this function a series of warning prompts, the kind that ordinary people would be scared of.

In a sense, the current Yun OS system is a closed ecosystem, but in order to take into account the ecosystem of the entire Android camp, a small gap is left, thus becoming a semi-closed ecosystem.

The Yun OS system and its unique ecological content are what other Android mobile phone manufacturers dream of... but unfortunately they are unable to do so.

This is especially true for a number of domestic mobile phone manufacturers.

However, even relying on customized and optimized Android systems, these few domestic mobile phone manufacturers have still achieved considerable success in the field of mid- and low-end smartphones.

----

But this cannot shake Weiku Electronics' dominance in the mid- and low-end mobile phone field.

In March, the two mobile phones, Xiaolan 3 and Xiaolan M3, as well as the reskinned versions of Vicool K80 and Vicool V83, were officially released and launched.

Weiku Electronics' mobile phone business has once again experienced a big boom.

Just as Weiku Electronics' mobile phone business was developing smoothly and the two mid- and low-end mobile phones it released received good market response.

In April, Xu Shenxue once again came to the R&D floor of Zhiyun Semiconductor.

This time, Xu Shenxue saw the self-developed dual-core SOC chip he had been waiting for for a long time and had just been successfully taped out: Zhixin S200A
This is a powerful chip that adopts the Zhixin 2.0 architecture, has a dual-core main frequency of 1.2GHZ, integrates a GPU with AP60 architecture, and the GPU frequency reaches 350MHZ. It also integrates Zhiyun's self-developed WCDMA baseband.

In addition, the S200 series will also include the S200B with a built-in telecom version of the communication baseband and the S200C with a built-in mobile version of the communication baseband. Both models will also be put into tape-out testing in the near future.

The most important thing for Zhiyun Technology is that this chip also integrates a large number of unique functional modules in Zhiyun mobile phones, such as security modules, photography modules, and coprocessor modules. They no longer need to be hung separately on the motherboard as before, making the internal structure design of the mobile phone simpler and easier, while also freeing up more internal space for other aspects.

This chip is the first-class chip designed by Zhiyun Semiconductor, and its performance is extremely powerful. It is just half a year late. It will need to undergo at least two months of small-scale trial production and testing. Mass production can only start in June at the earliest... In June, the S11 mobile phone will have been released on the market.

The S series can’t catch up...Now that the S11 mobile phone has begun large-scale mass production, the production capacity is rapidly increasing, and it is expected to reach the preset production capacity of million units next month.

Even the C series cannot catch up, because the core design of the C series has been frozen and it is currently in the stage of polishing the final details and preparing the supply chain and R&D production line.

The C4 series of mobile phones will begin small-scale test production in May, and will enter mass production in June, and begin to increase production capacity to prepare for the launch in August.

The above two series of mobile phones are destined not to use the Zhiyun S200 chip.

However, the A series mobile phones specially prepared for self-developed dual-core chips can be used!

The original purpose of Plan A was to prevent this situation and avoid the embarrassment of Zhiyun Semiconductor developing an excellent dual-core chip on time but finding no target for installation.

If nothing unexpected happens, this Plan A mobile phone will directly target the 4,000 yuan price range, and Zhiyun Technology plans to create another sub-high-end series.

This sub-high-end series A plan mobile phone will be used to replace the C series Pro version and compete head-on with the flagship models of various mobile phone manufacturers priced around 4,000 yuan.

These mobile phone manufacturers are busy thinking about breaking through the 4,000 yuan price range all day long, and they dream of touching the butt of Zhiyun S series!
You can’t touch the S series’ butt just because you want to!
(End of this chapter)